Page 90 of Cursed Shadows 3

I peek at the scribblings on the papers.

Conscription contracts. The fine print.

And I wonder what he is doing with these, since his career isn’t under a general, isn’t a contracted warriorship.

“Is this why you let me go out?” I lift myself onto the edge of the desk and perch there. My boots lull beside his chair. “So you can read all about the service?”

Daxeel sinks into the high back of his seat. His eyes glitter with a faint, tired amusement. He glances at the armchair draped with my crumpled shawl, then back at me perched on the edge of his desk.

“Reading in my leisure,” he says and runs his gaze over my dangling legs. “You judge too freely.”

The face I make is a mocking one. “Not thinking about changing careers, are you? From torturer to solider?”

It’s not exactly a promotion.

He offers no answer, no joke or sneer.

He simply watches me. His hand reaches out for my ankle and he begins an absentminded stroke along the calf of my stocking-sheathed leg.

My skin tingles at his touch.

“I was reading more about the Sacrament.” I explain away my stop at the scripture room. “But it only gave me more questions. Your home library is limited.”

Daxeel thinks on it a moment, on my detour. Then, he simply says, “And?”

The heels of my palms press into the desk, and I slump my weight. My mind sifts through countless curiosities that have been nibbling too long at my mind.

I ask, “Is it only who you can talk to Mother at the summit?”

He shakes his head gently. Stray tendrils fall into his face. The tip of one thicker curl brushes over the length of his lashes. “Caius can speak to her, too. We are of the same bloodline.”

My nose crinkles. “But you are the one with the shadows.”

As though it hears me, a resting shadow flicks from over his shoulder—then it drapes again, melting into the black shirt he wears.

“I have the shadows because I found a dragon eye first,” he says. “So I was the first to whisper through it to Mother. These shadows have latched onto me, but it is all temporary. I am merely their anchor to these lands.”

His soothing stroke down my leg is enough to curl my toes.

A tingle flutters through me.

I blink on the smog that’s too quick, too easy to come to my mind and distract me—

I focus on the doubt.

This is the first I am hearing of it, that he spoke to Mother in the first passage. The portal windows were blinded from the dragon caves, and Daxeel has never told me what went on in them.

So now I know—he whispered to Mother.

“What did you whisper?”

His smile is small. “A promise of what I will sacrifice. An offering to Mother, but not yet the sacrifice.”

I huff a breath and kick off my boots. They thud to the floor before I shift closer to him.

I rest my feet on his lap. “What if she doesn’t want it? What if Mother ignores your offer?”

His smile tugs. He drags his hands down my legs to hold my ankles in his firm, tender grip.

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